Well, the clock's officially ticking. In another month, I'll be unemployed. Deliberately. It probably won't last long - I'll get bored, and take a part-time gig somewhere. But for at least a few months, I plan to see what this retirement thing is like. Perhaps I'll work on building a paunch, as I'm in extremely good physical condition for a person my age. More likely that I'll go back to mountain-biking. Been thinking of trying my hand at growing japanese horseradish in water, as well - wasabi sells for amazing cash, and there are only a couple of places in the Northwest that grow it. Seems odd, as the climate is ideal for it. And unlike some of our other cash crops, it's legal.
It turns out that you can't just walk in and tell the boss you're retiring. No, that would be too easy. You have to kill a tree, pulp it, and produce roughly 20,000 pieces of paper, each of which must be printed with some sort of legal stuff (I suspect that lawyers own tree farms). Then, you have to fill out the paperwork and get several piles of stuff notarized, so it's all official (lawyers likely have a hand in that, too).
Then, the company has to give you permission to draw disbursements from your 401(k), which will take at least two weeks, and probably longer. The fact that you, not the company, stashed the cash in the 401(k) is irrelevant, for some unknown reason. It's policy, and until the company gives approval, you get squat.
There's a lot of waiting involved, probably because they're hoping you'll die before they actually have to do anything. Hey, if you've hit retirement age, you might croak at any second. Stretch it out; give him a chance to go on his own. We can screw around with his surviving family later on.
